One in a series of history pieces published in conjunction with The News-Star’s 125th anniversary.

The Twin City Queen cruised regally along the Ouachita River from 1968 until 2002, carrying tourists and locals down one of the state’s most renowned waterways.

The three-deck red and white excursion boat originally was known as the The Twin Lakes Queen.

In 2000, local businessman Harvey Hales Jr. talked about his family’s connection with the Queen with The News-Star. His father, Harvey Hales Sr., was a member of the crew who guided the boat to its Louisiana home from Kentucky Lake, Kentucky.

“It took a week or more,” Hales Jr. said. “But, Dad loved every minute of it.”

The word was that the boat had lost radio contact with the outside world. Rumors surfaced that the mayor at the time, W.L. “Jack” Howard felt Hales and the crew might have taken a wrong turn and ended up on another river.

Could it have happened? Was it true? No. It was a publicity stunt. The boat was found tied up in the back of Howard’s house.

“We were having a little fun and the public at that time did not know the boat was on its way to Monroe,” Howard said in a 2000 interview. “I had arranged for him not to talk to anyone on the radio after he turned north off the Mississippi towards Monroe. So, I can tell the truth that we had no communication with the boat.”

Howard’s joke was taken seriously throughout the state and around the world.

“I began to get calls from New Orleans and Baton Rouge saying, ‘We spotted the boat,’” Howard laughed. “We reported telephone calls and we ‘found’ that it was incorrect. By that time, the news had actually appeared in London, Japan and Germany that Monroe had bought a boat and lost it on the way home. It was fun to lose a boat and find it behind my house.”

After a new coat of paint, the Twin City Queen was fit to sail down the Ouachita River. The vessel held up to 250 passengers.

“People were excited about it,” Hales Jr. said. “We had the third most beautiful river in the world, and people were in the mind to use it.”

Her majesty has ventured thousands of times up and down the Ouachita River.

Cap. Michael Dunn steered the boat for eight years — six as a relief captain, then as skipper for two years.

He said the Queen wore many other crowns before becoming ruler of the Ouachita River.

“It was used as a car ferry in Arkansas,” Dunn said in a previous interview. “They thought it was too small for that, and it was sold to an excursion company in Pittsburgh.”

Dunn said the top speed of the 84-foot-long and 45-foot-wide boat was seven miles an hour, but they usually traveled at four. A typical cruise could take up to two hours.

In 2002, the U.S. Coast Guard permanently docked the Queen because of an unsafe hull.

It was salvaged from the water in January 2004 for inspection. Marine consultant Ken Helmrich of St. Amant, who conducted the assessment on the vessel after it was raised from the river, said he found no structural failures on the Queen that caused it to sink. Helmrich cited three contributing factors to the vessel’s sinking — the way it was tied to its dock, a drop in the water level on the Ouachita River and wakes from boats that were launched during a bass fishing tournament.

Helmrich said the front of the Queen was tied tightly to its dock while the rear of the vessel was tied loosely. Helmrich said a slight drop in the river’s water level caused some water in the boat to shift to the rear of the vessel, causing it to list slightly and putting a rear door close to the water.

“Just before she sank, there was a huge bass rodeo on the river and they probably had 100 to 150 boats launched at the marina,” Helmrich said. “All the boats were putting out a wake and the wake was washing in through the door. It just gained more and more water until it went under.”

Helmrich said portable electric bilge pumps located on the boat had nothing to do with the status of the boat, which was declared a total loss.